Barrier island project awaiting approval

Local, state and environmental officials have their sights set on barrier island restoration after passage of the federal Restore Act that will provide billions of dollars for such work.

Chance RyanStaff Writer

Local, state and environmental officials have their sights set on barrier island restoration after passage of the federal Restore Act that will provide billions of dollars for such work.The Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority is proposing a $120 million project to BP that involves beach and dune restoration to Whiskey Island.The Caillou Lake Headlands Beach and Dune Restoration Project aims to help protect and sustain significant coastal habitats as well as protect threatened and endangered species.Terrebonne Coastal Restoration Director Nick Matherne said a restored barrier shoreline would reduce wave energy and salt-water intrusion from the Gulf of Mexico into back-barrier environments including marshes and mangrove wetlands.“We have to convince (BP) that this is a worthwhile project,” he said. “Whiskey Island is one of our barrier islands, which acts as one of our first lines of defense from hurricanes and everyday-wave attenuation.”For the past century, Whiskey Island, which is one of five islands that comprise the Isles Dernières barrier island chain, located about 18 miles southwest of Cocodrie inTerrebonne Parish, has experienced an average shoreline erosion rate of 57 feet per year.The project involves replenishing Whiskey Island's coast through beach and dune-fill placement by using offshore sand sources as well as building back-barrier marsh behind the west portion of the island with mixed sediment from a separate offshore source, Matherne said.The process involves placing about 8.7 million cubic yards of sand to create both beach and dunes, and about 82,000 cubic yards to construct a beach separation dike along about 23,000 feet of shoreline. The marsh component involves placing about 972,000 cubic yards of mixed sediments to create the marsh platform along roughly 5,500 feet of shoreline and about 171,000 cubic yards to construct the dikes, according to project reports.All this sand can be obtained by the Ship Shoal, which is an east-west sand body a few miles away from the Isles Dernières, said Kerry St. Pé, director of the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program.Hurricanes blow sand off these islands, which creates problems, St. Pé said.“You need a platform that is going to catch that sand,” he said, which is where the back barrier marshes come in.St. Pé said if nothing is done with these islands they will continue to wear away, and there will be nothing to knock down a storm surge or provide a place for birds to rest, causing an overall reduction to the estuary.“People should care about this because they want to keep their houses dry,” he said.Whiskey Island and its sister islands not only provide protection from erosion and storm surge for bayou communities, they provide important nesting and stopover habitat for migratory birds and shorebirds, said state Wildlife and Fisheries biologist Michael Carloss.The islands also provide important fisheries habitat, creating spawning and wintering grounds for species, he said.Carloss said Whiskey Island, however, does not have as significant an amount of animals as Raccoon Island has, which is home to the largest nesting population of brown pelicans in Louisiana.“Humans should feel some kind of responsibility to protect these animals, especially if there is something they can do to prevent it,” Carloss said. “They are part of the ecosystem. Removing any of that could be important and could affect other species.”Although this project is only a short-term solution, it must be started immediately, St. Pé said, along with many others.“We've lost so many thousands of acres already,” he said.The Isles Dernières, French for “last islands,” became an archipelago after a hurricane destroyed it in 1856.State officials have said any plan for Restore Act dollars will be grounded in the state's $50 billion master plan for coastal protection and restoration.That amount of money gives an idea of how much work needs to be done, St. Pé said.There is no way Louisiana can afford to do this alone.“But Louisiana is not the cause of all this,” St. Pé said. “So we need help from the federal government and any source that we can get it from. And the BP settlement is a good place to start.”St. Pé said there is no telling when the damage assessment is going to be complete. But he hopes it is soon.

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